ASTR 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Full Moon, Angular Diameter, The Maritimes
14 Apr 2016
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Document Summary
The moon has a long and interesting history in respect to human society, not all of it astronomical. To the ancients it would have been important in providing illumination at night. But there are other influences that have been claimed over the years and decades and centuries, not all of which are very scientific; for example, the belief that werewolves are transformed at the time of full moon. Many of you may have heard of claims that crime rates are up, homicides, and so on. Birth rates are increased during the time of new moon, there are more traffic accidents, people act in lunatic ways. And indeed the word lunacy itself comes from the word for moon. If you"d like to know more, follow the link at the bottom of this page, which provides you with a very careful argument about the validity of many of these claims, which interestingly are not supported by statistical evidence.
